Kajan Johnson isn’t just an MMA fighter and an activist for MMA fighter welfare, he’s also a rapper.
Just like pretty much everything Kajan Johnson does, his music has a message. A prime example of this is the music video for his song Hustle Makes Muscle.
At the beginning of the video, Johnson transforms into a supernatural figure called ‘The Wolf’. Following the metamorphosis, he happens upon a parked car with a character known as ‘The Bully’ in the driver’s seat. This man is bald, wearing a black shirt and is watching an MMA fight on his phone. ‘The Wolf’ proceeds to beat the living snot out of everyone in the car, choke ‘The Bully’ out, tie him up and drive him to a beach under the shade of night.
The video ends with ‘The Bully’ waking up on the seashore after urinating his pants in terror. In the final scene, Johnson, who’s reverted back to his human form, wakes up naked on the beach. He stretches and takes off jogging.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the message behind that video. Or indeed, who ‘The Bully’ is supposed to represent.
Frustrated
Johnson is frustrated about the way UFC fighters are treated. He’s also upset with his fellow fighters for not trying to work together in order to improve their welfare.
He aired his grievances in a very public way at the 2017 UFC Athlete Retreat. The Canadian stood up in the middle of a Reebok presentation to question the apparel-makers on their controversial deal with the UFC. He was escorted out of the premises during the rant.
Under the terms of the deal, UFC fighters must wear Reebok apparel at all events during fight week including open workouts, weigh-ins and the fights themselves. While they are allowed to have other sponsors, wearing other brands at UFC events goes against the terms of the contract. They receive a sponsorship payout based on how many times they have fought for the company. This has resulted in quite a few fighters, including Johnson, losing out on a significant portion of sponsorship revenue.
UFC welterweight Alan Jouban filmed a portion of Johnson’s incident at the athlete Retreat. The footage quickly gathered momentum on social media.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50f1wAGPGyk
The Bully
Johnson was riding a four-fight win-streak when he was matched up against Islam Makhachev at UFC Calgary. The Russian was 15-1 when they fought and was a heavy favourite. Sure enough, Makhachev scored a first-round armbar in the first round.
To the surprise of a lot of folks, Johnson was kept on the UFC’s roster after the fight. Few thought this would happen because he is a very vocal advocate of Project Spearhead, a fighter-led effort to unionise professional mixed martial artists. As some fans will remember, the UFC recently let Leslie Smith walk.
Smith, another prominent Project Spearhead member, was scheduled to fight undefeated rising star Aspen Ladd at UFC Atlantic City in April 2018. However, Ladd tipped the scales 1.8 lbs over the weight limit. Ladd offered Leslie an additional $5,000 on top of her 20% purse deduction in order to make the fight happen. However, Smith accepted the UFC’s offer to pay her show and win money rather than fighting Ladd. She was subsequently released from the promotion.
Another reason why it wouldn’t have come as much of a shock if the promotion decided to cut ties with Johnson after Calgary was how he acted at the weigh-ins. After coming off the scales, he walked over to Dana White and did the classic ‘fake out’ handshake, much to the UFC president’s chagrin.
Getting off easy
Johnson joked on the Ariel Helwani MMA Show that he thought the weigh-in stunt ‘seemed like a good idea at the time’Â
“No, I thought it was a playful way to get a message across and to just kind of poke the bear a little bit.”
“Dana White has said a lot of things about a lot fighters that are very disrespectful and nobody ever says anything to him. A lot of the time, this caused a lot of anger and frustration in me which, in turn, leads to me acting out in certain ways. One of which may have been the handshake.”
What he ended up doing was a lot more tame than what he first had in mind. Perhaps if he carried out his original plan, he wouldn’t be fighting Rustam Khabilov at UFC Moscow on September 15.
“Originally, I was actually planning to do something much worse.”
“I’m glad that my sky team, my guides, guided me towards a more playful approach. My original plan was to make a real stand and a real statement. Instead of staring down my opponent, fist in the air to Dana White and stare him down instead.”
Johnson didn’t even get a good talking to backstage. He caught eyes with White after the weigh-ins, but he believes the UFC president ignored him on purpose. The ring girls weren’t the only UFC employees that enjoyed the disrespectful act either.
“No, nobody said anything. I saw Dana backsatage and he just looked right through me like I didn’t exist. Nobody really said much to me in the way of the UFC. A couple of the lower-level UFC employees were laughing about it and going, ‘You’re absolutely mad.’ Nobody sat me down. It wasn’t like the Athlete Retreat where I got escorted out.”
There will be a lot of eyes on Johnson’s weigh-in in Moscow. The handshake fakeout got a big pop from the crowd. Maybe he has something similar planned before his obligatory staredown with Khabilov.
